Etienne Bacrot wins French Championship

8/28/2017 – Etienne Bacrot did it again. At the French Championship which was played form 19th to 27th August in Agen he won his eighth National Championship. After a dramatic last round and a tie-break against Laurent Fressinet. Sophie Milliet became French Women's Champion. | Photo: Pascal Simon

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The last round of the French Championship could hardly have been more dramatic: after eight of nine rounds five of the ten players shared first place with 5.0/8 each: Laurent Fressinet, Etienne Bacrot, Christian Bauer, Tigran Gharamian and Yannick Gozzoli.

Bacrot played in the last round with Black against his direct rival Bauer and won convincingly:

Gharamian and Gozzoli also belonged to the leading five players but in their game they both showed little ambition to become French Champion 2017: after 19 moves they managed to draw a well-known theoretical line by a repetition of moves:

Laurent Fressinet fared much better. He played with Black against Jean-Luc Chabanon who overambitiously sacrificed an exchange and a few moves later succumbed to a powerful counterattack.

Thus after nine rounds Bacrot and Fressinet shared first place with 6.0/9 each.

Johannes FischerJohannes was born in 1963 in Hamburg and studied English and German literature in Frankfurt. He now lives as a writer and translator in Nürnberg. He is a FIDE-Master and regularly writes for KARL, a German chess magazine focusing on the links between culture and chess. On his own blog he regularly publishes notes on "Film, Literature and Chess".

See also

9/25/2018 – The first round of the Batumi Olympiad 2018 saw no upsets in the form of match score, but there were individual upsets where a Moroccan player was able to beat 2700+ Chinese GM Li Chao. Vassily Ivanchuk could not win his game and Sophie Milliet lost to a 1900 opponent. We bring you all the pictures from the venue as well as videos that give you the flavour of the environment. The tournament is just warming up with ten more rounds to go, but there is already so much going on! That's what Olympiads are all about, too many things happening at the same time!

See also

8/28/2018 – The victory of Tigran Gharamian (photo) at the French Championships 2018 in Nimes turned into a marathon affair as the Armenian-born French grandmaster claimed the title only after two sets of tiebreaks culminating in an Armageddon game. The Women's Championship was clearer: Pauline Guichard won the title with 7½ out of 9. Second place went to Sophie Milliet, who scored 6½ points. | Photo: Amruta Mokal (archive)

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.

How much was the prize money? /// J.Fischer wrote: "showed little ambition to become French Champion 2017: after 19 moves they managed to draw a well-known theoretical line by a repetition of moves". Would it be plausible to have the position repetition rule have a Sofia Rule aspect so that ... whichever player causes a third occurrence of a position, before movepair 30, could be declared the loser by his opponent?

Enjoy the best moments of recent top tournaments (World Cup, Isle of Man Open) with analysis of top players. In addition you'll get lots of training material. For example 10 new suggestions for your opening repertoire.